#28 – My Internet Manifesto

25 comments

List #28 – Cancel extra s.n.s. (social networking sites)

After I created The Guild, I put my toe into the waters of web as a PERSON. Before that, I’d remained mostly anonymous and private. I’m really glad I decided to be more social with the internet, because it has created this blog, as well as connected me with old friends and new. BUT when you say “yes” to everything, you become a slave to maintaining all those connections. I’ve felt overwhelmed a lot, scattered, and this is partially because I have a lot of “internet homework” to do. Things slip through the cracks, and I feel guilty when I neglect things, like the forums for the Flog, or stray email that accidentally gets archived.

Also, I realized my problem with social networking sites. Early on, I decided to accept whatever friend request came through, because I could use the service to message/bulletin about The Guild or other acting things. I don’t use it as a social resource, which prevents me from checking out other people’s pages, as I would if I only had 25 close friends.

With #28 I put my foot down! Arg! I canceled the following services today:

Friendster (Pics of my friend with her ex-husband indicate NO ONE is still on this service)

Pownce (Twitter won because of blog plug-in and sheer # of contacts)

Hi5 (What?! When did I join this?!)

NetLog (Best place to get hit on by skeevy italian teens)

The company who makes it possible to consolidate all the services into one place will win my heart. For now, I just bookmarked all the sites I need to check in one folder, and twice a week I will make the rounds, hopefully having time to check out a few friends’ pages on the way.

Then, I was on a roll. Oh boy. I went through my email trash and unsubscribed to every catalogue and newsletter that I auto delete upon sight. I will make this a habit to nip wanton emails like this in the bud. Bottom line, my time is valuable, and I’d rather spend it doing a point and click game than wasting it on things that make me go “Ugh, THAT?!” when they land with a dirty thud in my inbox. I have all but my yahoo mail being filtered to my gmail account, so I have maximum efficiency on the email front.

Good things happened because of this mission as well! Stumbling around, I happened to find the perfect resource that, just a month ago, I said to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could…” Well, wish fulfilled! Thanks to Google Alerts I set up a search on “The Guild” and now can have an email delivered daily on people’s links, mentions etc. about my show to my inbox. No more hand-Google once a week and searching through already clicked links to read about press, thank people in blog mentions etc…it’s great!

If anyone has any other efficiency tips about consolidating services, streamlining and centralizing, post them here! For now, strikeout item #28! (edit because that was confusing before, lolz)

Andrew

Happy New Year.

It must a be a good time-saver getting automated updates on The Guild being linked rather than having to check through it all manually.

Google alerts is a godsend. I use it to keep up with the work of my colleagues and the few hits to my vanity search. I also recommend Google Reader because you can consolidate anything with an RSS feed into one interface. All of my online activity is now consolidated into GMail (and the Google Alerts that I send to it) and Google Reader. I don’t have time for anything else that cannot be put into these channels.

when i was in the process of changing webhosts, i unsubbed from a bunch of mailing lists, too. i resubbed to a few but just changed my e-mail address to a gmail one instead of one off one of my domains. easier to handle spam that way since gmail just nukes it right away. i had to set up an email tied to a domain, but i’ve enabled spam assassin on that account and so far *knock on wood* i can manage the spam that does sneak in.

i haven’t unsubbed from a lot of the social networks i joined (which i joined because i was curious). i’m mainly on Facebook & Twitter. i still have accts at MySpace and Friendster, but only because certain people are on those sites and haven’t joined the likes of Facebook. plus they’re in different countries and so i guess Friendster is still popular there.

when it comes to social networks, i try to only add people that i know. fortunately, i don’t get a lot of requests from people i don’t know. well, i have a lot of followers on Twitter that i don’t know, but somehow i treat that site differently than Facebook or those other types of mega-social sites.

anyway, i just wanted to say kudos for consolidating the net side of things. here’s to a more organized 2008! 🙂

Oh nooo, I didn’t mean that like that. No, unfortunately, there are no auditions in town due to the strike, so no one is booking series regulars. I mean that it was my first strikeout…well, I’m an idiot 🙂 I like how that energy got out there, maybe a sign for this year?! !!

Soma

strangely enough i thought heroes.. really?

cus lately i just dont agree with heroes at all..

then i thought.. joss is doing something new.. how awesome.. !

and THEN i thought.. wait.. theres a strike..

*le pout

-on a totally unrelated note: ive decided the new comp [brief]-case
will be constructed entirely of fiber composite materials.. i ordered
1.5 gallons of 300/21 2-part epoxy [with pumps!] from jgreer.com..
of course this is all moot w/o pix, no ?

Good for you, Felicia!
As a passive reader of your blog I’m just about to dip my toes in the networking business but due (or rather thanks) to a chronic illness (CFS) I’ve kept myself out of the radar so far…and I keep on taking it s-l-o-w-l-y…possibly or the best! Thanks for the tip on google alerts.
Happy New Year to you and keep up your wonderful work! 🙂

I can’t help but think this endless quest to organize and improve is born of the idea that we can “fit it all into our lives.” Wanting to improve ones self is one thing but it appears you are treading awfully close to the dark side. Is it possible that your fearlessness in the face of accepting so many daunting long term tasks/goals is actually hurting you? Have you heard the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” It seems those destined for greatness, the ones that conquer multiple fields of endeavor, start out by being amazing in one discipline.

One of the best football (American) coaches ever, used to have a playbook that was less than half the size of the rest of the teams in the league. How could he be successful with half as many plays? He would make his players run the same plays in practice, over and over and over. Eventually, they learned every play so thoroughly that the individual players actually all knew their teammates responsibilities as if it were their own. They eventually named the Superbowl trophy after him.

Even little Daniel LaRusso was able to defeat Johnny Lawrence of the Cobra Kai because of the quality (not quantity) of what Mr. Miyagi taught.

I know you are proud of your list but if I were in your shoes, I’d re-evaluate to truly take advantage of all your efforts in creating the 101 list. Review the list to pick the five items you feel are the most important. I’m sure it was a positive exercise to create such an exhaustive list but with such a large list of items, there are really more place-holders than truly important goals. I think you would benefit from the added focus for the tasks you actually choose to tackle and be surprised by the choices you make–I know I’m curious.

Cassie Dawn

NetLog (Best place to get hit on by skeevy italian teens)…

“Hey baby, have you ever had italian sausage?” O.o Um… haha… eep!

I don’t know you find the time to do the stuff on your list of just the regular daily/weekly activities, let alone fitting in all the other stuff. Clearly you win at life. 😉 I have a hard enough time remembering to check my email every other day or so… haha

I don’t know if I would go as far as saying she is trying to be a “jack of all trades.” In fact, reviewing her list, she has a few more prominent end-goals, and a lot of small goals or more appropriately — ‘tasks’, such as:

* Clean out computer
* Organize Music Tags
* Switch address books

Keeping in mind, that she has over 2 and half years to do this list… I think the little items in there balance some of her bigger ambitions. 🙂

Jim Bob

Highbrow philosophical thoughts on organization 😮

Grab yourself a giant pickle jar (like one of those ones from Costco)

First put as many fist-sized rocks as you can fit in it. (5 or 6 probably)
Then fill the jar with rocks half that size.
After that pour in some gravel sized rocks.
And then add some pebbles.
And finally pack the jar full of sand.
You may have to jostle the jar around a bit to get it all to fit but do your best to fit it all in.

So what’s all that mean?
Each of the biggest rocks represent the most important things in your life that you give the highest priority.
The small rocks represent your second level of priorities and on down to the sand which represent all the little piddly things you wonder how you even got involved in.

So what’s the lesson?
you may think it is “no matter how full you think your jar (life) is, you can always cram in a little more”
and while that is true, be careful with that one.

the real lesson is:
“the big rocks will only fit in your jar (life) if you put them in first”

🙂 I’ve been enjoying the Guild and your blog – thanks for writing. Here’s to a great and productive 2008!

Ben

Hey Mike–thanks for sharing your thoughts. I sure didn’t mean to imply anything negative. Felicia is definitely a rare breed…a true renaissance person in an age of lazy. I was just adding my much un-needed advice. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan for sure. In a word, she’s great.

Just think what the world would be like if she were a physicist or nuclear engineer…we might all be driving nuclear powered cars by now.

BTW, I didn’t take anything you said as offensive. I was just merely looking at the same topic from a different view. As I myself have also started my 101/1001 list… and was just giving my thoughts on how there are usually only a handful of major items, and several smaller tasks. 🙂

Oh, and I also liked the Karate Kid reference. That was amusing. 🙂

little_sparks

I’m right there with you on this one, I’ve tried to avoid getting involved in ‘duplicate’ SNS’s, I have my livejournal and nothing more.

Now that nearly every one has a blogging service attacted, you end up just pasting the same entries/info from one to the next.

Formaldehyde

I use flock as my web browser, which is based on mozilla and marketed (for lack of a better word) as the social browser. It’s got all these little sidebars and feeds for websites like youtube, flickr, livejournal, etc. Nothing for myspace as of yet apparently, but I’m sure it’s not too far away. It’s a good start, you should at least try it, I find it useful. I’ve only really been using it to it’s full potential for a couple of days, I downloaded it for the built in up loader for flickr. It also has a blog tool where you don’t have to visit the site, it just pops up a window and you type in your thoughts.

I’m also going to now distinguish myself from another James by using my preferred internet handle 🙂

– james

PS: What does the little un-named box down below “post” do?

Formaldehyde

I just noticed that Myspace has RSS feeds dotted around it, so you can use that for the more important people if you want. But then again, who the hell ever blogs on myspace?

Ben I think your point is well taken, because I am a notorious multi-tasker, and of course, follow-through is my achilles tendon. I think the list may have too many long term goals on it, but I want to try them, because 2 1/2 years is pretty long. It was a brainstorm to fill all those frikkin’ numbers, but now I’m determined to do it! 🙂

54 Lean another language > Well I’m French, dunno if you like this one language lol

But seriously I would love to offer my services for “The Guild”. I can donate some time. I’m a film maker, graphic designer and musician.
I manage my own record label Lumina. I do the graphics, videos, web, promotion/marketing etc…
Sounds like a lot but I do have free time, I’m super fast! I love to help, I make tutorials for my friends and will soon make some for my fans on my blog 🙂

Anyway I’m ready to help in anyway I can, just ask and I’ll do it for free!
Check more of my work on http://www.taho.ws I’m sure I can be a great help 🙂

David

Steve

I was going to volunteer for 84, until I read 95, and 101 and 87 and 37………….. in fact forget I mentioned it at all. 😉

bla bla bla, from your story, then…
The professor then picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled the spaces between the pebbles. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students pondered what the right answer was this time, wondering what else could be poured into the jar?
The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty spaces in the sand. The students mumbled.

Then the ending…

Take care of the rocks first . . the things that really matter. . then the pebbles. Set your priorities.
The rest is just sand (the little stuff)!
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented.
The professor smiled and said, “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers.”